ftmichael, posts by tag: work - LiveJournal

D10 became D11 on 24 March. When I picked him up from school on the 26th, I had a present waiting in the car for him. Before he unwrapped it, he said 'Thank you! I don't even know what it is yet, but I know it'll be awesome because it's from you'.

Isn't that sweet?

(For the curious: I got him Smart Mass in the Alien Ooze colour, and a Glow and Throw UFO flying disc. He likes playing Frisbee and has quite a collection of Silly Putty, so I thought I'd help take him to the next level.)


Also, on 11 March, we were discussing space travel and the distinct lack of aliens thus far. As per usual, I started quoting Eddie Izzard - unbeknownst to him, as he's never seen Eddie.

Me: We've been ready for alien monsters! Not even a squirrel with a flute has turned up!
D10: Yeah! Not even a weasel that likes turnips!

I think he and Eddie would get along.


On 10 March, D14 offered his fist to his fishbowl for a fist bump, and Alfonso the guppy turned, approached him and waved a fin. Awesome.


On 27 February:
D14, over-enunciating in urgency: 'I'm hun-ga-ry!!'
Me: 'Really? I'm Belgium.'
D14: ... *headdesk*

As always, all these are copied over from my Twitter. If you have a Twitter account and you friend me, I may just friend you back. My Twitter posts are locked so you can't see them unless I friend you.

22 March 2008: The sound system at CVS is playing Mambo Number 5. Someone remind me what year it is.

10 April 2008: I just misread a road sign as 'road pilates ahead'.

10 April 2008: I just drove past a dead mallard in the middle of a busy road in a commercial area. No idea how he got there, but how sad.

10 April 2008: On the road yesterday, saw a truck with roof but no back or sides; inside, armchair bolted to the floor, and a disco ball suspended from the ceiling. Perplexed.

10 April 2008: D10: 'You're Michael. You always think of things.'

06 March 2008: D13, coming at me with a pillow: 'Staaaab!' Me: '... That's a pillow.'

13 March 2008: D9, eating oatmeal for the first time ever (!) (with brown sugar added): 'It tastes like sugary goosh.' (rhymes with push.)

29 February 2008: D9: 'Are you choking?' D13: 'No.' D9: 'Why?'

29 February 2008: D9, randomly: 'Lamppost, will you be my valentine?' [We were in the kitchen and there was no lamppost anywhere nearby.]

31 January 2008: D9, entirely randomly while taking out cursive homework: 'I pity da fool.'

01 February 2008: D13 spent the afternoon at a friend's house so D9 and I played James Bond 007: From Russia With Love on Gamecube. In multiplayer, you're essentially running round a few locations from the film, with assorted guns, trying to kill each other. You can press a button and make your character crouch down, so you don't appear on the other person's radar. D9 makes excellent use of this feature. He was staying like that and walking around in a crouched position, singing his own spy theme music as he did so, being all 'woo, I am so sneaky'. He walked right past me as he did that, and I stared at him for a minute all 'wtf?' and then shot him. He broke off singing abruptly as his character fell over.

I post these to my Twitter via text from work; if you have an account, add me and I'll add you back so you can see my updates. They're locked.

Those not in the US, though, will note that incoming texts from the US may cost them money and therefore Twitter may not be very efficient for them. In the interest of sharing with everyone, I'm copying these quotes to my LJ. I'll try to remember to do this more frequently as I tend to get at least one a week from my amazing kids.

Please note that D12 and D13 are the same person. He had a birthday at the end of December. D14's birthday was in November, and D9 will turn 10 in March. See here for a recap of who's who.

( Context is minimal, which makes them funnier, I feel.Collapse )

In the fencing waiting room last night, a teenager came out of his lesson and chatted to his mother while waiting for her to finish what she was doing on her laptop.

Son: We should buy Microsoft Office for [someone]. He doesn't have it.
Mother [slightly disbelieving]: He doesn't have Microsoft Office?
Son: No. We should get it for him.
Mother: Well you're the big programming genius ...
Son: Yeah, I know ...

I'm not entirely sure with how that's relevant unless she expects him to pirate Office for this person or write all new Office-esque software or something, but I'm thinking about here that no 'programming genius' - I think she meant computer genius, really - would get Microsoft Office for anyone. They'd get an alternative.

Mother: What about Open Office? You know ... [Son is not responding; I am getting a distinct 'I don't know what that is, which means my mother knows more about this than I do, but she just called me a programming genius and I do not want to look like an idiot so I'm going to keep my mouth shut' vibe from him] It's like Microsoft Office, but it's ... free? You know? [Still no response. Vibe from the mother says, 'I think I know what I'm talking about, but I'm not entirely sure, and my son is not responding, so maybe I'm making an idiot of myself here, but he's not being derisive or contradicting me, and I think I know what I'm talking about, so I shall plough on.'] Or Google Documents. We use that at work sometimes now ... you know?
Son: [coming to a bit, with a distinct 'Thank god, I can contribute something I know, however small' vibe] Google Documents is good 'cause you can access it anywhere.
Mother: Yeah. But maybe something like that?

They packed up and left about then. I was so blown away and pleased to hear this middle-aged woman talking about Open Office to her son. I'm glad her workplace has a clue, even if her 'programming genius' kid doesn't. Yet. I hope he figures things out.

For those of you playing along at home, D13 is now (as of a week ago) D14. (He is a Scorpio.) Happy birthday, kid.

We now have:
( Quite a little cast of charactersCollapse )

The D is indeed the initial of all three kids' first names. To make it more interesting, D14 has the same last initial as D12 and D9. Hence their ages being an ideal way of telling them apart, even if it requires a little effort on your part as they age.

D9 is improving at viola, but is still wildly off-key. Thank god he's still plucking and not using his bow yet. See Eddie Izzard's bit in Definite Article.

Stupid TMobile and its 160 character limit. I'll have to consolidate my posts later. At least I have unlimited texts on my plan.

D9 and D12 are taking a comic drawing class, which is quite cool, but I keep forgetting to bring a book. Word finds are getting old. At least I can post to LJ now! Thrilling for you people too, I know.

When I make a string of posts like this, please comment only on the last one. I do apologise for clogging your friends pages.

ETA: When I post via text, I type it all as one post, and my plan sends it as multiple texts because of the character limit. So they should all show up at the same time. Give it a few minutes, and when there are no more, I'm done.

Oh good, this works with TMobile now. There will no doubt be loads of posts from me at work. Stay tuned.